Fresh data from the National Bureau of Statistics show that property prices softened in the country's biggest cities and rose at a slower pace in other major urban centers in February. Average prices for new houses in large cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen all fell from the previous month. More buying curbs are expected as officials said Monday during the Two Sessions that the government would continue to favor the country's rental market. Chen Tong takes a closer look.

On a monthly basis, new house prices declined in 12 of the 15 first-tier cities, while those in another 55 major cities surveyed posted slower or flat growth in February. Residential property prices in Shenzhen saw the most evident month-on-month decline -- by 0.6 percent. Prices in smaller cities including Nanchong in Sichuan Province, Urumuqi in Xinjiang and Xuzhou in Jiangsu all saw increases of over one percent from the previous month. The Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development said during the Two Sessions today that the property market has been stabilized and that more efforts to ease the property price increases will come.

JOE ZHOU, RESEARCH DIRECTOR JLL CHINA "The current problem is the shortage of supply in China. I think the urgency for the government is to provide sufficient housing to people. I think the government has realized this, that's why they encourage all cities as well as developers to build those rental houses in order to accommodate the needs of ordinary people."

Over the past year, property developers, banks and even internet giants have been paying attention to the potential in the rental market. Deputy governor of the People's Bank of China Pan Gongsheng said today that policies favoring more financial support for the property leasing market are expected to come out in the first half of this year.